Judy

“They form in front of him: his friend, his wife, his daughter. People who loved him, who believed he’d do good things. In the mild April mist, he thinks: All I ever wanted was to make one slight noise that might delight you all. How small a thought it took. How small a thought.”
― Richard Powers, Orfeo

“The other face begins saying something about money and rockets and missions, but she blocks her ears. She has no time for the hopes of men. Your day is dead, she wants to tell them. Stop talking.”
― Erin Swan, Walk the Vanished Earth

“He read what he could find—the distilled knowledge of hundreds of experts. He couldn’t follow all the physiology. The body had evolved to feel fear, hope, thrill, and peace in the presence of certain semi-ordered vibrations; no one knew why. It made no sense that a few staggered chords could make the brain love an unmet stranger or grieve for friends who hadn’t died. Nobody could say why Barber moved listeners and Babbitt didn’t, or whether an infant might be raised to weep at Carter. But all the experts agreed that waves of compressed air falling on the eardrum touched off chain reactions that flooded the body in signals and even changed the expression of genes.”
― Richard Powers, Orfeo

“There’s a biblical saying that translates roughly as “First you will do, then you will understand.” Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and experience something before its meaning becomes apparent.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed